• Fee: £2,100 (£150/day, where 1 day is equivalent to 8 hours)
• Contract: Freelance/self-employed
• Location: Pre-show meetings virtual/hybrid; rehearsals & performances, London/Bristol

We are particularly looking for an assistant director who requires wheelchair access in order to work. Extensive experience is not required.

Key Dates:

Rehearsals: 8 days, London (location TBC)

• 6-9th January, 10am-6pm
  12-16th January, 10am – 6pm

Tech week: 4 days, London (location TBC)

• 18-21st January

Install/Show days:

• 23rd & 24th January, 10am-10pm, Bristol Old Vic Weston Studio.

Number of shows: 2

The Role

The assistant director will work with our director, Jamie Hale, and with the associate and movement director. We’re looking to support someone in developing their skills and expertise and to help them build their career in the wider theatre industry. We will work to shape the role around the person we appoint, including their pre-existing experience and skills.

When we are appointing to the role, we will be looking for candidates who can demonstrate that they would be able to bring a strong, positive vision to the show, and either have the skills or are able to develop the skills to take on the below tasks. We will not necessarily appoint the most experienced candidate, as we want to ensure that whoever is appointed is taking on a role that will work as a stepping stone for them in their future career.

As Assistant Director, your duties will include:

Creative tasks

Interpreting the director’s vision for the show alongside your own, and supporting them in embedding their vision
Giving the director your thoughts about each piece to support them in making sure that the narrative of each piece comes through clearly (known as ‘dramaturgy’)
Helping the director work out where performers should be on stage and how they should move (known as ‘movement and blocking’)
Giving the director your observations on how performers are delivering their lines
Taking notes from the director for the actors (e.g. about their acting choices, adjustments, and corrections) and give those notes to the actors
Supporting or leading elements like warmups, rehearsals with individual performers, or full rehearsals if necessary and appropriate

Practical tasks

Attending meetings before, during, and after the production
Attending rehearsals and performances
Being on top of the rehearsal schedule
Making sure that everything is set up in the rehearsal room each day
Being a point of connection between the performers and the Stage Manager/Producer

If you need access support with any of the tasks involved in this role, we will work with you to ensure you have the necessary support in place.

The Production

The Acts 2025 comprises 4x 30 30-minute mono/dialogues by disabled performers with integrated access elements. The show includes:

The Ache of It, Caitlin Magnall Kearns

Set in a seaside B&B in Northern Ireland, The Ache of It follows Simon, a married cab driver with osteoarthritis, and Fiona, a fat, bisexual widow, as they embark on a complex, decade-long affair.

The Ache of It places older, disabled, and fat bodies at the heart of a romantic narrative, exploring themes of desire, guilt, aging, and care with humanity, craic and honesty.

Body Job, Kathrine Payne

The number of ‘lonely deaths’ (those undiscovered for weeks or more) is on the rise in the UK. Body Job is a play about death and disconnection, from the perspective of the people who clean up the mess we leave behind.

Body Job follows two cleaners working for a private firm that clean up death sites: old age pensioners, violent crime scenes, they’ve seen it all – until this job. Bodies, shame and violence merge in a messy exploration of the dirty jobs that no one else wants to do.

REALMS, Tatum Swithenbank

REALMS is a genre-bending show that shifts through ritual, disability, magick, and belonging. It explores how folklore and the wheel of the year intersect with my existence as a working-class witch living with a progressive disease. This entanglement takes me on a journey through portals where I come across folklore creatures who help guide me on my quest.

Grounded on pagan sabbats, the story unfolds different aspects of the cyclical nature of existence, the creatures and monsters that reside there, and the simple yet complicated nature of life and death. REALMS isn’t just a show but a spell with the audience, one that challenges people to sit with discomfort, to see the awe and magick in the everyday, and to recognise the portals we pass through constantly between body and spirit, memory and myth, reality and lore.

Pruu the Pidge, Sha Supangan

I once saw a pigeon building her nest on anti-pigeon spikes. Not confused — committed. Balanced. Soft twigs pressed into metal teeth like it was nothing. I thought: that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.

This piece is music-led, but it isn’t a concert. It’s more like a quiet ritual. A sonic shelter. Something stitched from stories, rhythms, and the sharp things I never thought I’d survive.

I grew up inside basslines. Co-owned a club before I even knew how to stay. But these days I’m sober, unhoused, and done with pretending that performance has to be spectacle. This is about the in-between moments: the ones you don’t post about, the ones where your voice shakes and you sing anyway.

There will be music. There will be breath. There will be space for grief, for laughter, for listeners to come as they are. I’m building something strange and gentle and alive.

To Apply

Send the below to team@cripticarts.org, including the name of the job you are applying for in the subject line:

• A CV (up to a 4 min video in BSL or spoken English, or up to one page in written English). Your CV doesn’t need to only contain theatre work, it can also be other forms of work, volunteering, and education.
  If you have less experience in theatre, don’t worry – there are a number of transferable skills – and any role which involves gathering and communicating information and ideas between people will be very relevant indeed
• A cover letter (up to a 4 min video in BSL or spoken English, or up to one page in written English) which tells us why you are interested in directing for theatre, and what excites you about the role
• If you require wheelchair access in order to work, please feel free to flag this in your email.

Please note this role is particularly seeking wheelchair using applicants and those who cannot work without wheelchair access. Our Always the Audience research found a shortage of opportunities for people with high physical support needs to grow and develop their careers and works. We are also aware that many opportunities for early-career directors take place in spaces without wheelchair access. As the rehearsal and performance spaces for this opportunity have wheelchair access, we are enthusiastically seeking wheelchair users to apply for this role. All applicants must be disabled (to see what that means to CRIPtic, click here).

We are also particularly keen to hear from applicants who are from the global majority (a collective term for people of Indigenous, African, Asian, or Latin American descent).

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday 11 August 2025.